The Band guitarist, songwriter dead at 80
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Robbie Robertson, guitarist and essential songwriter for The Band – he penned classics resembling “The Weight” and “The Evening They Drove Previous Dixie Down” – died Wednesday at age 80.
The Toronto-born Robertson and Garth Hudson had been the 2 surviving members of The Band, which gained acclaim on their very own after backing up first Ronnie Hawkins after which Bob Dylan within the ’60s. The Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Robertson, who just lately accomplished the soundtrack to the movie “Killers of the Flower Moon,” died in Los Angeles, surrounded by household, “after a protracted sickness,” his publicist Ray Costa mentioned in a press release.
The Band, made up of Arkansan drummer-singer Levon Helm and three different Canadians: bassist-singer-songwriter Rick Danko, keyboardist singer-songwriter Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, who performed keyboards and different devices together with saxophone, influenced widespread music and genres resembling alt-country and Americana. They have been initially known as the Hawks, however ended up as The Band – a conceit their followers would say they earned – as a result of individuals would level to them after they have been with Dylan and seek advice from them as “the band.”
Robbie Robertson’s early years
Jaime Royal Robertson was born in Toronto and spent summers on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve the place his mom Rosemarie Dolly Chrysler grew up. He by no means met his father, Alexander David Klegerman, who died earlier than he was born and whose existence Robertson solely discovered of years later. His mom had since married a manufacturing facility employee, James Robertson, whom Robbie Robertson at first believed was his organic dad or mum.
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Robertson was a highschool dropout and one-man melting pot – part-Jewish, part-Mohawk and Cayuga – who fell in love with the seemingly limitless sounds and byways of his adopted nation and wrote out of a way of amazement and discovery at a time when the Vietnam Battle had alienated tens of millions of younger Individuals. His life had a “Candide”-like high quality as he discovered himself amongst most of the giants of the rock period – getting guitar ideas from Buddy Holly, taking in early performances by Aretha Franklin and by the Velvet Underground, smoking pot with the Beatles, watching the songwriting workforce of Leiber and Stoller develop materials, chatting with Jimi Hendrix when he was a struggling musician calling himself Jimmy James.
He had a knack for impressing his elders. When he was 15, his group opened for Hawkins at a membership in Toronto. After overhearing Hawkins say he was in want of recent materials, Robertson hurried residence, labored up a few songs and introduced them over to his lodge. Hawkins recorded each of them, “Somebody Like You,” and “Hey Boba Lu,” and Robertson would quickly discover himself on a practice to Hawkins’ residence base in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
He toured with Hawkins within the U.S. and Canada as members left and the performers who finally turned The Band have been introduced in. By 1963, Robertson and the others had grown aside from Hawkins and have been able to work on their very own, recording a handful of singles because the Canadian Squires and getting into rock historical past when mutual acquaintances urged they need to tour behind Dylan, then rebelling in opposition to his picture as folks troubadour and infuriating followers who thought he had offered out.
The Band and its legacy: With Bob Dylan and afterward …
In 1965-66, the Band teamed with Bob Dylan in a few of rock’s most momentous reveals, with Dylan enjoying an acoustic opening set, then joined by the Hawks for an electrical set that was booed so fiercely, Helm dropped out and was changed on the highway by Mickey Jones. As captured in audio recordings and in footage by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker seen a long time later within the Dylan documentary “No Route House,” the music on stage for such Dylan songs as “Simply Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “Ballad of a Skinny Man” greater than equaled the fury of its detractors, culminating in a Might 1966 present at Manchester, England, when one fan screamed out “Judas!”
“I don’t belieeeeve you,” Dylan snarled in response. “You’re a liar!” Calling on the Hawks to ”play f—-ing loud,” he led them by way of an all-out finale, “Like a Rolling Stone.”
“A form of insanity was percolating,” Robertson wrote in his memoir. “The entire ambiance was heightened. I adjusted the strap on my Telecaster so I might launch it with a fast thumb motion and use the guitar as a weapon. The concert events have been beginning to really feel that unpredictable.”
Later in 1966, Dylan was badly injured in a motorbike accident and recuperated within the Woodstock space, the place The Band additionally quickly settled. Underneath no contractual obligations or any form of deadlines, Dylan and his fellow musicians stepped out of time altogether. They jammed on previous nation and Appalachian songs and labored on such originals as “Tears of Rage” and “I Shall Be Launched” that have been initially supposed as demo recordings for different artists. “The Basement Tapes,” as they have been finally known as, have been amongst rock’s first bootlegs earlier than being launched formally — partially in 1975, and in a full six-CD set in 2014.
On the similar time, Dylan inspired The Band to strive an album of its personal; the primary two albums, “Music from Massive Pink” and “The Band,” each launched within the late Nineteen Sixties, outline The Band. “Music from Massive Pink” featured the Dylan-Danko collaboration “This Wheel’s On Fireplace” and Dylan-Manuel’s “Tears of Rage,” together with such Band originals as Manuel’s “In a Station” and Robertson’s “Caledonia Mission.”
The rock scene was turning away from the psychedelic extravagances of the Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band” and a wave of sound results, lengthy jams and lysergic lyrics. “Music from Massive Pink,” named for the previous home close to Woodstock, New York, the place Band members lived and gathered, was for a lot of the sound of coming residence. The temper was intimate, the lyrics alternately playful, cryptic and craving, drawn from blues, gospel, folks and nation music. The Band itself appeared to face for selflessness and a shared and very important historical past, with all 5 members making distinctive contributions and showing in publicity photographs in plain, darkish garments.
In his memoir, Robertson remembered the primary time their previous boss listened to “Music from Massive Pink.”
“After every music, Bob checked out ‘his’ band with proud eyes. When ‘The Weight’ got here on, he mentioned, ‘That is improbable. Who wrote that music?’” he wrote. “‘Me,’ I answered. He shook his head, slapped me on the arm, and mentioned, ‘Rattling! You wrote that music?’”
By means of the “Basement Tapes” that they had made with Dylan in 1967 and thru their very own albums, The Band has been extensively credited as a founding supply for Americana or roots music. Followers and friends would communicate of their lives being modified. Eric Clapton broke up together with his British supergroup Cream and journeyed to Woodstock in hopes he might be a part of The Band, which influenced albums starting from The Grateful Useless’s “Workingman’s Useless” to Elton John’s “Tumbleweed Connection.” The Band’s songs have been coated by Franklin, Joan Baez, the Staple Singers and lots of others. Throughout a tv efficiency by the Beatles of “Hey Jude,” Paul McCartney shouted out lyrics from “The Weight.”
Like Dylan, Robertson was a self-taught musicologist and storyteller who absorbed the whole lot American from the novels of William Faulkner to the scorching blues of Howlin’ Wolf to the gospel harmonies of the Swan Silvertones. At instances his songs sounded not simply created, however unearthed. In “The Evening They Drove Previous Dixie Down,” he imagined the Civil Battle by way of the eyes of a defeated Accomplice. In “The Weight,” with its lead vocals handed round amongst group members like a communal wine glass, he evoked a pilgrim’s arrival to a city the place nothing appears unimaginable:
“I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin’ about half previous lifeless / I simply want some place the place I can lay my head / Hey, mister, are you able to inform me the place a person would possibly discover a mattress? / He simply grinned and shook my hand, ‘No,’ was all he mentioned.”
Robertson and The Band: Woodstock to ‘The Final Waltz’
The Band performed on the 1969 Woodstock pageant, not removed from the place they lived, and have become newsworthy sufficient to look on the quilt of Time journal. However the spirit behind their greatest work was already dissolving. Albums resembling “Stage Fright” and “Cahoots” have been disappointing even for Robertson, who would acknowledge that he was struggling to seek out contemporary concepts. Whereas Manuel and Danko have been each frequent contributors to songs throughout their “Basement Tapes” days, by the point “Cahoots” was launched in 1971, Robertson was the dominant author.
They toured often, recording the acclaimed reside album “Rock of Ages” at Madison Sq. Backyard and becoming a member of Dylan for 1974 reveals that led to a different extremely praised live performance launch, “Earlier than the Flood.” However in 1976, after Manuel broke his neck in a boating accident, Robertson determined he wanted a break from the highway and arranged rock’s final sendoff, an all-star gathering at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom that included Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Younger, Muddy Waters and lots of others. The live performance was filmed by Martin Scorsese and the idea for his celebrated documentary “The Final Waltz,” launched in 1978.
Robertson had supposed The Band to proceed recording collectively however “The Final Waltz” helped completely sever his friendship with Helm, whom he had as soon as regarded to as an older brother. In interviews and in his 1993 memoir “Wheel on Fireplace,” Helm accused of Robertson of greed and outsized ego, noting that Robertson had ended up proudly owning their musical catalog and calling “The Final Waltz” an arrogance undertaking designed to glorify Robertson. In response, Robertson contended that he had taken management of the group as a result of the others – excepting Hudson – have been too burdened by drug and alcohol issues to make choices on their very own.
“It hit me arduous that in a band like ours, if we weren’t working on all cylinders, it threw the entire machine off track,” Robertson wrote in his memoir “Testimony,” printed in 2016.
Robertson, who moved to Los Angeles within the Seventies whereas the others stayed close to Woodstock, remained near Scorsese and helped oversee the soundtracks for “The Colour of Cash,” “The King of Comedy,” “The Departed” and “The Irishman” amongst others. He additionally produced the Neil Diamond album “Lovely Noise” and explored his heritage by way of such albums as “Music for the Native Individuals” and “Contact from the Underworld of Redboy.”
The Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame in 1994; Robertson attended, Helm didn’t. In 2020, Robertson regarded again and mourned within the documentary “As soon as Had been Brothers” and within the title ballad, on which Robertson sang “When the sunshine goes out and you may’t go on / You miss your brothers, however now they’re gone.”
Robertson married the Canadian journalist Dominique Bourgeois in 1967. They’d three kids earlier than divorcing.
He’s additionally survived by his grandchildren Angelica, Donovan, Dominic, Gabriel, and Seraphina, in accordance with Levine. The household requested that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River “to assist a brand new Woodland Cultural Centre,” Levine mentioned.
Contributing: Mike Snider, USA TODAY
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